This disclosure relates generally to clinical information systems, and more particularly, to systems and methods for displaying temporal data on small mobile devices.
Patient care has become increasingly complex with the widespread use of advanced technologies in routine care. Furthermore, healthcare providers are required to keep track of a staggering amount of information, and their failure to do so may have a detrimental effect on patient care. A solution to this problem may include a Clinical Information System (CIS). As will be appreciated, the CIS may be configured to aid in the acquisition, storage, manipulation, and distribution of clinical information throughout a caregiving facility like a hospital. In other words, the CIS may be employed to collect and store information associated with one or more patients in a caregiving facility. A clinician may then access the stored patient information to monitor a status of the patients and/or to make a diagnosis.
In certain situations, it may be desirable for the clinician to monitor temporal patient data outside the caregiving facility. Advances in digitization of data have allowed the patient data to be available to the clinician outside the caregiving facility. Vital clinical information, once confined to bedside monitors, is becoming easily available to caregivers, such as clinicians, at remote locations with the advent of CIS employing Web portals. In addition, clinicians today have access to patient data in their offices and/or homes. In other words, the clinician may access patient data from his/her home, office, or any other location that is remote from the caregiving facility. More recently, the patient data may also be accessed via a mobile device that has a relatively small display, where the mobile device may include a cell phone, a pager, a personal digital assistant (PDA), or the like.
Furthermore, in certain situations, it may also be desirable for the clinician to monitor temporal patient data outside the caregiving facility. As will be appreciated, the temporal patient data may be representative of patient data acquired over a period of time. For example, temporal clinical data may include patient data such as vital signs like heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), blood oxygenation level (SaO2), lab results, or infusion volumes. Moreover, temporal patient data like the heart rate and blood pressure are collected frequently on hospitalized patients and have traditionally been presented graphically as an X-Y time series plot on Clinical Information Systems, thereby allowing the clinician to monitor patient data over an extended period of time.
Moreover, it may also be desirable to view the temporal patient data outside the caregiving facility on a mobile device, such as a cell phone, a pager, or a PDA, for example. However, one of the biggest challenges of displaying temporal patient data on a mobile device, such as a PDA, is an effective display of the temporal patient data on a relatively small display of the PDA. Displaying the time-series data on screen of a PDA or a screen of a cell phone may be visually taxing or may require scrolling. In addition, visualization of temporal data on the display of a mobile device, such as a PDA, a cell phone, or a pager, may disadvantageously result in loss of granularity of data and/or resolution.
It may therefore be desirable to develop a design that allows efficient display of temporal data on a relatively small display of a mobile device. More particularly, there is a need for an approach for efficiently displaying low-density and/or high-density temporal data on small display devices, such as cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs), thereby enhancing clinical workflow as the clinician may easily visualize a snapshot of relevant patient data.